Biography:
Captain Henry Wirz from the book The Good the Bad and the Mad, Weird
People in American History, E. Randall Floyd, Harbor House Book Augusta,
Georgia, 1999.
Captain
Henry Wirz was the only confederate officer executed for war crimes.
He was the commander at Andersonville Prison; and whether someone in the
wrong place at the wrong time, or complicit in his crimes is still open
for debate.
Wirz
immigrated to Kentucky from Switzerland and Germany. He was wounded in
the right arm at Seven Pines, and his arm caused him pain and was
mostly useless up until the time he died. His wound made it so he could
not perform on the battlefield, and he was assigned to prisoner of war
camps.
Andersonville
was also known as Camp Sumter. It was built to house 10,000
prisoners. It existed for only fourteen months, and housed 45,000 total
prisoners during that time, of whom 13,000 died. The maximum at any
one time was 32 thousand.
Andersonville
was a place where men lived in filth, the only supply of water was a
creek running through camp, which was also the septic system. There was
not enough provisions for the number of men, and consequently many
starved. Shelter was also difficult to come by. There were not
sufficient tents, and those available were torn and worn. Consequently
they were subject to both sun and rain.
He
was arrested after the war. The general of prisons, General Winder,
died of a heart attack, and was not available to be tried. He was
charged with two crimes, one of negligence—that he allowed conditions to
be such that it was injurious to soldiers of war. The other charge was
that he murdered thirteen prisoners.
The
trial included one shocking story after another. Prisoners had gone
without food for days. The food served was uncooked, and filled with
bugs. Sanitation of the camp was such that the stench could be smelled
for miles.
He was sentenced to hang. He maintained his innocence. He was killed November 10, 1865.
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